The plane made a big curve out over the sparkling blue Pacific and then swept round across Hollywood and gained height so as to make the Cajon Pass through the great golden cliff of the High Sierras.
Bond caught a glimpse of endless miles of palm-lined avenues, of sprinklers whirling over emerald lawns in front of gracious homes, of sprawling aircraft factories, of the outside lots of film studios with their jumble of gimcrack sets—city streets, Western ranches, what looked like a miniature motor-racing track, a full-size four-masted schooner planted in the ground—and then they were in the mountains and through them and over the interminable red desert that is the backstage of Los Angeles.
They flew over Barstow, the junction from which the single track of the Santa Fe strides off into t
